In a scenario that is becoming increasingly common as Europe's budget-cutting measures intensify, 77-year-old Dimitris Christoulas recently took his life.
This past Thursday, Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips presented the 2012-13 Estimates of Expenditure, representing a six per cent jump over last year, with increases on both recurrent and capital.
When we were children, we were loath to request gifts we made to our former friends because we were afraid that we would end up with (hog) styes on our eyelids - the punishment for being a 'tekiback'.
The following is a response to the article, 'Combustion turbines or diesel engines? Choosing the right technology for lowering fuel costs' by Val Fagan, published in The Sunday Gleaner on April 29, 2012.
The following is a submission by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI).IMF or no IMF, now that the honeymoon period is nearly over, the People's National Party (PNP) administration's best option to get through the impending fiscal crisis is to...
Journalists, media houses and all those concerned with the dissemination of information, opinions and ideas have been champing at the bit to see the reforms anticipated from the Hugh Small-led report to Parliament on libel law reform in Jamaica.
History is replete with examples of dysfunctional relationships between a nation's executive and its bureaucracy, but none more educational than the half-century of complicated dynamics among United States (US) citizens, US media, US political executive...
The Sunday Gleaner of April 22, 2012 carried an article titled 'Shock treatment: Can JPS do more to reduce energy cost?', which made reference to the role of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) in the procurement of new electricity-generation capacity for the national grid.
Jamaica's unprecedented fifth consecutive hold on the Regional Four-Day title has no superlative that adequately describes the feat. With the format of the competition changing from year to year in terms of where the matches are played, what time of day, and even the colour of the ball, Jamaica have proven trumps no matter what was thrown at them.
Rampaging students (hooligans? protesters?) wreaked havoc upon the opening day of University of the West Indies (UWI) examinations last Monday. The students were up in arms about being barred from exams over fees they owed. They were angry at the university, not at the Government, the biggest 'samfie' man in the country.
Historically, the generalised attitudes towards incest and other forms of child sexual abuse are rooted in denial and the blaming of the innocent victims. A perusal of the literature on the topic points to a time when clinicians, parents, teachers, police personnel, child-protection agents, social workers and courts were all sceptical of the idea that many adults, including fathers, brothers, uncles and family friends, regularly raped many baby girls and some baby boys.
The national anthem is a prayer, but more like a wish and delusion. It says, "Justice, truth be ours forever." That is precisely where the problem 'lies'. The order is wrong. Justice can never be put before truth, but that is exactly the situation in this land of wood, water and homicides.
In the cruel and unforgiving world of competitive politics, one is often advised to make a friend of an opponent of your opponent. Alas, a principled position counts for more than one taken for politically expedient and opportunistic reasons.
Jamaica has had a long romantic relationship with CARICOM, once characterised by sentiments and emotions rather than by economics and pragmatism. The economic benefits of that love affair have been primarily one-sided.
Journalists, including the local fraternity, celebrated World Press Freedom Day last Thursday, and our minister of information, in a Senate statement, basked in Jamaica's enviable record of press freedom. Fine. But there are some disturbing contemporary trends regarding free speech which are not getting any attention from our media here...
If you walk into the highest Nepali village in the world, on the way to Mount Everest, a set of men will talk to you in join-up (cursive), say some things in an accent that sounds somewhat like the Indian tongue and you might recognise only two words:...
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller made us all very proud when TIME Magazine announced that she was nominated, along with Usain Bolt, among the world's 100 most influential persons.
Recent international ratings have positioned Jamaica at the bottom, or near last, on lists of economic growth and indebtedness. What is the framework within which these failures occurred?
Disenchanted with austerity measures and high unemployment, French voters went to the polls last Sunday in round one of a presidential ballot that could render Nicolas Sarkozy the first president in more than 30 years to lose a re-election bid.At a time...
